Smaller, Cheaper SSBN-X?

The always-scooping Christopher Cavas reports:

Rep. Gene Taylor, D-Miss., chairman of the House Seapower subcommittee, complained in a letter sent Thursday to Defense Secretary Robert Gates that the Navy “refuses to share” the analysis of alternatives (AoA) for the SSBN(X) program — a document that, Taylor says in the letter, was completed last year.

Rather than commit to replacing the current crop of large Ohio-class submarines armed with Trident II D5 ballistic missiles with similar ships, Taylor wants to see what a smaller, Virginia-class submarine armed with a less-lethal ballistic missile would cost. Instead, he says, the Navy already has decided it wants the bigger and more expensive ships — which some sources say could cost as much as $70 billion.

“I have repeatedly asked officials of the Department of the Navy if less-expensive alternatives to building the Ohio-class were examined,” Taylor said in the letter. “I have repeatedly been told that only the Trident solution met the requirement.”

Rep. Taylor understands the chart below and can clearly do the math: if replacing the Ohio-class SSBN fleet costs $85 billion and eats into funding for other Navy shipbuilding—like, say, the surface combatants built in Mississippi that employ at least 11,250 people in Gulfport and Pascagoula—then his district would take a serious economic hit.

The key question is whether Taylor’s parochial preference for a smaller, cheaper SSBN-X might actually comport with broader U.S. national security requirements. I for one would like to read the analysis of alternatives to see what the Navy thinks about a smaller, cheaper boomer.